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Out of the Shtetl: Making Jews Modern in the Polish Borderlands »

Authors: Nancy Sinkoff
ISBN-13: 9781930675544, ISBN-10: 1930675542
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Brown Judaic Studies
Date Published: January 2004
Edition: (Non-applicable)

Author Biography: Nancy Sinkoff

Book Synopsis

	Acknowledgments	ix
	A Word about Place Names	xiii
	List of Maps and Illustrations	xv
	Introduction: Enlightening Polish Jews, Moderating the Jewish Enlightenment	1
Chapter 1.	In the Podolian Steppe	14
	The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth	14
	Jewish Settlement in the Noble Republic	16
	Traditional Ashkenazic Jewish Culture in the Eighteenth Century	19
	The Sabbatian and Frankist Challenge	23
	The Heartland of Hasidism	34
	East Meets West: Mendel Lefin's Encounter with the Berlin Haskalah	45
Chapter 2.	The Maskil and the Prince: Private Patronage and the Dissemination of the Jewish Enlightenment in Eastern Europe	50
	"The Family" and Pre-Partition Reform	57
	The Polish Englightenment and Adam Kazimierz Czartoryski	62
	On the Eve of the First Partition	67
	Reforming Poland, Reforming Poland's Jews	69
	Adam Jerzy Czartoryski, Lefin, and the Russian Legislation of 1804	106
Chapter 3.	The Battle against Hasidism and the Struggle for the Adolescent Soul	113
	Mendel Lefin's Psychology	114
	Limiting Reason in the East European Jewish Englightenment	120
	Training the Rational Soul	132
	The Dangers of Enthusiasm and Imagination	141
	The Immortality of the Enlightened Soul	161
Chapter 4.	The Linguistic Boundaries of Enlightenment: Revisiting the Language Polemic in Eastern Europe	168
	Wisdom and the Turn to Yiddish	173
	Berlin Rears Its Head	176
	Defending and Transforming Early Modern Poland	181
	The Role of Yiddish in the Shifting Borders of Ashkenaz	198
Chapter 5.	After Partition: The Haskalah in Austrian Galicia	203
	The Creation of Galicia	205
	Absolutism and Habsburg Policy for the Jews of Galicia	208
	The 1789 Edict of Toleration	217
	Joseph Perl and the Moderate Haskalah	225
	The Battle against Hasidism is Pitched	237
	Haminhag kehalakhah hu ("Custom is as Binding as Law")	241
	Minhag, Rabbinic Authority, and Modernity	262
	Epilogue: The Legacy of the Moderate Haskalah	271
Appendix	"Prayer against the Hasidim"	274
	Bibliography	276
	Index	310